EA to shutter online support for more aging titles

Electronic Arts has announced plans to close down servers for a number of its older online titles, including Battlefield 2: Modern Combat on consoles, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and more.

Electronic Arts has announced plans to deactivate online features for a handful of its older titles, a plan the company seems to be quitefond of. Standard fodder for EA's wrath are 2009 and 2010 based sports games, select demos, the Quantum Leap inspired Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, Need for Speed: Most Wanted (a personal favorite), and more.

Server closings will begin with a major power outage on August 11 of this year, with 2010 versions of Madden and NHL seeing online features closed for business on October 1.

EA's service site notes that as "the number of players still enjoying the older games dwindles below a point" the publisher decides to pull resources away from older titles in favor of newer games.

One of the contributing factors to EA not originally supporting Xbox Live was said to be Microsoft's instance to manage online portals for games on its service. In 2004, EA and Microsoft made a deal that would allow EA to manage its own servers for game releases, as it had already been doing with releases on the PlayStation 2.

Since those early days, EA has often gone back into its library of dusty releases to pull the plug on online services for games. EA's current list of titles with dead online features now totals over 100.